I know you guys in the band are extra busy and actually I believe the messageboard is somewhat left unmoderated intentionally because Jens doesn't believe in censorship or he thinks chaos is part of life and it's almost impossible to moderate/make it comform to rules however it has been a good while that this part of the messageboard especially has been turned into a trollfest with all these idiots running amok.

So, as a fan I would like to see the board cleaned up, lots of idiots banned and generally I would like to see a more professional messageboard in outlook and content. Stratovarius is on the ascend again, the rest of the site looks very professional so in my opinion the messageboard should follow through. It must look and operate just as professionally and do justice to the name and legacy of Stratovarius.

I hope the band finds the time to think through these points and redesign/revamp the whole thing getting completely rid of the uprofessional, trolling, vile and disgusting elements in the process that made this place unattractive since some time now.

This place used to be an excellent place for good discussion in the past with lots of interesting people conversing. Now they are mostly gone and it is overrun by idiots.

BRAVO!!!!!! maybe you want start with the fans that come to my post with insults, maybe??

MY ONLY SIN WAS STUDY A LOT AND BUILD MY OWN CDS!!!!!! and play covers

Bathory Killcraft wrote:

I know you guys in the band are extra busy and actually I believe the messageboard is somewhat left unmoderated intentionally because Jens doesn't believe in censorship or he thinks chaos is part of life and it's almost impossible to moderate/make it comform to rules however it has been a good while that this part of the messageboard especially has been turned into a trollfest with all these idiots running amok.

So, as a fan I would like to see the board cleaned up, lots of idiots banned and generally I would like to see a more professional messageboard in outlook and content. Stratovarius is on the ascend again, the rest of the site looks very professional so in my opinion the messageboard should follow through. It must look and operate just as professionally and do justice to the name and legacy of Stratovarius.

I hope the band finds the time to think through these points and redesign/revamp the whole thing getting completely rid of the uprofessional, trolling, vile and disgusting elements in the process that made this place unattractive since some time now.

This place used to be an excellent place for good discussion in the past with lots of interesting people conversing. Now they are mostly gone and it is overrun by idiots.

On topic: I love these forums, these are so different and simple. Many band related forums suck. Forums of Sonata Arctica for example, have too many pointless rules and wannabe mods whining about your grammar and everything. Most of my favourite bands doesn't even have forums.

Of course some moderating would be good. Some people are here only to turn other people against one certain person.

I think the Spam boards should be left as is, though because non-members cannot see those 2 sections anyway, and members have a choice--don't look, don't see, if you don't like to drink the water find another well.

I notice you have been here a while... are you really sure you want to make this place "what it once was!?!?!"

For instance let's say "once was" means the spring of 2004.... I think it's more peaceful here now than it's been in a long time.

As you could see immediately from this thread start, there are predictable accusations of trolldom and predictable calls for banning individuals.

There will always be people who annoy you, at the moment at least you can block them and you will never have see their posts again as long as you're logged in. In the old tforum I took this one step further, people who were blocked by a lot of people had their posting privileges circumscribed, if I recall I made a time limit between posts, and oldtimers' and heavy posters' disapproval carried a lot more weight.

This made things neater, but created other problems.

We have tried heavy manual moderation (human intervention...... commonly known in saner corners of the internet as just "moderation") as well, and I've seen this tried in other forums as well in any number of forms that you can imagine. Especially in Tolkki's forums he has experimented with this, which has enlightened me a lot in regards to what is attainable and what is desirable when you in this very artificial way host discussions involving other people.

Tolkki invariably started these forums in the spirit of a wish for beauty and intelligent and polite discussion. He has gone thru four full forum cycles (so far): setting up, enticing fans to participate and spend a lot of time and effort, moderating (himself or by proxies), and subsequently just deleting everything.

Timo T himself has incidentally also very frequently called for the heavy moderation, or outright shutting down of, this place, all the while also contributing himself directly to the filth and chaos he claimed to deplore. Please do not ask me to even begin to try to explain this beyond pointing out that it is a trolling plot as old as Usenet (probably it's as old as mankind itself). Or perhaps with a more modern term we can correctly call it "griefing".

Of course he has called for the shutdown of he entire band let alone its official forum, because he chose to try to destroy the band, chose to leave the band, and for that reason is not in the band anymore.. but that as they say is an entirely different story.

We tried blocking Tolkki. He spent hundreds of man-hours getting back in and starting more bullshit. It was only last year I managed to block him in any kind of permanent fashion, which actually made a lot of difference.... also traffic went down, and in many ways I like it!

This type of forum is a dying breed anyway, and this one is one of the oldest surviving band forums on the internet. I don't like the idea of moderating it to death. : -)

I have long standing plans of making more of these self-moderation mechanism a reality, but invariably nowadays music and other life stuff gets priority, especially in light of the fact that Tolkki now is permanently banned and traffic here really is way way down.

Some of the ideas I've been toying with:

1) a special type of topic which is owned by its started. he or she can then delete any discussion that he or she feels doesn't belong. If you post in that thread, you post is at the mercy of the person who "owns" the thread.

2) A completely nazi-moderated subforum. This means, I pick someone (a user and not a band member obviosuly) who is interested in being a real bastard, and create/designate a forum just for him or her to nazi-moderate. Same as with (1), anything you post in this forum will be at the mercy of that moderator (whoever it would be).

Of course if this subforum (or these kinds of owned threads) became a flourishing oasis of serious discussion and deep thought, and traffic and user enjoyment of this forum or those threads would in the end dwarf the other forums, no-one would be happier than I, and the continuity of the whole forum itself and the integrity of my point of view (hard line anti-censorship and openness if you didn't figure this out already) would still somewhat be preserved. If you would like the same sort of free speech (or filth, or trolling, or chaos, or whatever you might want to call it) that you have here at the moment, you can choose to stay away from the more sane places.

3) The same weighted-blocklist-summing scheme as the old tforum one (I named it "killfile" after the usenet idea). Some of the code is already in place for that.

What complicates some of this a bit more from a programming perspective is that the world already has moved along to phpbb3, whereas this is phpbb2. The code has had quite a few modifications over the years but I commented everything clearly so it should not be a lot of work to incorporate the changes into phpbb3. In fact this is one of the reasons I've put off doing the "point 3" above, it feels silly to spend the time and effort to implement this logic into phpbb2 when it's rather ancient..

Ignore certain threads -- that's a nice idea actually. Or one could go even further, instead of (or... on top of) the old fashioned categorization that is forced on you by this "forum structure" one could have threads that are just floating. You could then pick threads that you never ever wanna see anything from again and other ones which are "favorites". Another thing which really annoys me about phpbb is that the structure is completely linear, there is no "threading" of posts the way that was possible on Usenet even 30 years ago. This whole fucking thing should really be rewritten from the ground up........ but who has the time? I don't for sure. : \

im not saying i think it should be banned or anything.
our current ways of moderation( or lack of) are good enough and really not something a band member should be putting time into unless the band member likes to do so

moderation probably works best on private forums where people self moderate as well. rhapsody of fires moderated public forum pretty much is a ghosttown. will see what happens when they release their next album. looks like it's also a reason luca turilli does not have a forum to even deal with what he does not want to deal with.

Sorry jeans, or one admin with jens face... i'm so frustrated in this fórum that i dont have any idea of nothing now.....

really some guys think that build covers of stratovarius in my own style and study harder for no pay any studio is a hell sin againt your life.....

after that i was more insulted that, maradonna in england only for do that i like, i wish and i want!

Its me the insane here or some stratovarius fans are insane?? Im one fans, But I'm coherent......

Some of here start to compared me with kotipelto...... when i listen this i was a diarreah in my brain.....

For god, other tell me ... "you use bad the autotune" i use other soft better that this..... and im not so bad.... im hitting notes very good....

I dont have idea what the fucking happen with fans, but isnt only from Stratovarius, Queen group is the same,

I listen very psychiatric stuff about me, stratovarios, my style, my HORRIBLE sim in play stratovarius songs....... kotipelto. my classical style, my progress, my sound, if im argentinian or italian (Im Both) My english acent, if i sound like australian, or spanish, or im a shit for no have british acent......

Please, I prefer the indifference before this shit!

I stop and i think...... so bad are the human being to harassed one person for play music??

Maybe im wrong.... i dont have idea really....

JensJohansson wrote:

Bathory Killcraft wrote:

Make it what once was Jens, come on.

I notice you have been here a while... are you really sure you want to make this place "what it once was!?!?!"

For instance let's say "once was" means the spring of 2004.... I think it's more peaceful here now than it's been in a long time.

As you could see immediately from this thread start, there are predictable accusations of trolldom and predictable calls for banning individuals.

There will always be people who annoy you, at the moment at least you can block them and you will never have see their posts again as long as you're logged in. In the old tforum I took this one step further, people who were blocked by a lot of people had their posting privileges circumscribed, if I recall I made a time limit between posts, and oldtimers' and heavy posters' disapproval carried a lot more weight.

This made things neater, but created other problems.

We have tried heavy manual moderation (human intervention...... commonly known in saner corners of the internet as just "moderation") as well, and I've seen this tried in other forums as well in any number of forms that you can imagine. Especially in Tolkki's forums he has experimented with this, which has enlightened me a lot in regards to what is attainable and what is desirable when you in this very artificial way host discussions involving other people.

Tolkki invariably started these forums in the spirit of a wish for beauty and intelligent and polite discussion. He has gone thru four full forum cycles (so far): setting up, enticing fans to participate and spend a lot of time and effort, moderating (himself or by proxies), and subsequently just deleting everything.

Timo T himself has incidentally also very frequently called for the heavy moderation, or outright shutting down of, this place, all the while also contributing himself directly to the filth and chaos he claimed to deplore. Please do not ask me to even begin to try to explain this beyond pointing out that it is a trolling plot as old as Usenet (probably it's as old as mankind itself). Or perhaps with a more modern term we can correctly call it "griefing".

Of course he has called for the shutdown of he entire band let alone its official forum, because he chose to try to destroy the band, chose to leave the band, and for that reason is not in the band anymore.. but that as they say is an entirely different story.

We tried blocking Tolkki. He spent hundreds of man-hours getting back in and starting more bullshit. It was only last year I managed to block him in any kind of permanent fashion, which actually made a lot of difference.... also traffic went down, and in many ways I like it!

This type of forum is a dying breed anyway, and this one is one of the oldest surviving band forums on the internet. I don't like the idea of moderating it to death. : -)

I have long standing plans of making more of these self-moderation mechanism a reality, but invariably nowadays music and other life stuff gets priority, especially in light of the fact that Tolkki now is permanently banned and traffic here really is way way down.

Some of the ideas I've been toying with:

1) a special type of topic which is owned by its started. he or she can then delete any discussion that he or she feels doesn't belong. If you post in that thread, you post is at the mercy of the person who "owns" the thread.

2) A completely nazi-moderated subforum. This means, I pick someone (a user and not a band member obviosuly) who is interested in being a real bastard, and create/designate a forum just for him or her to nazi-moderate. Same as with (1), anything you post in this forum will be at the mercy of that moderator (whoever it would be).

Of course if this subforum (or these kinds of owned threads) became a flourishing oasis of serious discussion and deep thought, and traffic and user enjoyment of this forum or those threads would in the end dwarf the other forums, no-one would be happier than I, and the continuity of the whole forum itself and the integrity of my point of view (hard line anti-censorship and openness if you didn't figure this out already) would still somewhat be preserved. If you would like the same sort of free speech (or filth, or trolling, or chaos, or whatever you might want to call it) that you have here at the moment, you can choose to stay away from the more sane places.

3) The same weighted-blocklist-summing scheme as the old tforum one (I named it "killfile" after the usenet idea). Some of the code is already in place for that.

What complicates some of this a bit more from a programming perspective is that the world already has moved along to phpbb3, whereas this is phpbb2. The code has had quite a few modifications over the years but I commented everything clearly so it should not be a lot of work to incorporate the changes into phpbb3. In fact this is one of the reasons I've put off doing the "point 3" above, it feels silly to spend the time and effort to implement this logic into phpbb2 when it's rather ancient..

Ignore certain threads -- that's a nice idea actually. Or one could go even further, instead of (or... on top of) the old fashioned categorization that is forced on you by this "forum structure" one could have threads that are just floating. You could then pick threads that you never ever wanna see anything from again and other ones which are "favorites". Another thing which really annoys me about phpbb is that the structure is completely linear, there is no "threading" of posts the way that was possible on Usenet even 30 years ago. This whole fucking thing should really be rewritten from the ground up........ but who has the time? I don't for sure. : \

The ignore function has one disadvantage, it works only for members of the forum. So, be it for ignoring other members or for ignoring whole threads, people who only read along but aren't members - maybe some new-gained fans, maybe some who think about registering but haven't decided yet - don't have this option, and atm all they see are the same poor-written insulting posts in every open subforum. So in a way yeah, maybe that's not very "welcoming" for an official band forum.

Btw, I wonder how many people actually use the ignore function? I usually try to avoid threads which I can tell from the title I won't be interested in; and if it's a post of said member in a "normal" thread, I try to "ignore" it on my own as long as a certain point isn't reached. If it's too much, I try to tell said person that it is (not that it seems to work, though...). But still I don't want to block her or him completely, could always be I'd miss the (for me) only interesting post from her/him

The idea with threads being moderated by their creator seems to be worth a thought and I guess would work to keep the spam in the spamthreads But you couldn't solve the "spam-thread-problem" with that, if you wouldn't combine it with a thread-ignoring-function at the same time...?

Actually I like the idea of a forum as free as possible, one would think things get regulated if you just wait long enough. But maybe that's a bit of a too positive way of thinking, as long as people can hide behind an anonymous account?

im pro/banning only when people cross the line, and that line is this massive rejection by all the strato/forumites to one member because of his/her behaviour, in other words, vote for banning.
when there is a user that insults with no reason about your, religion, politicians, what country are you from, sexuality, racial comments repeateldy....
I think even in chaos-burg we cant just roll with it

I can't think of many serious discussions that were not allowed to take place here because of the trolling/flaming. Truth is, the forum is very low-traffic and if we ban the trolls all that will be left is Game of Thrones discussions and Mr. Cool Edit's tonedeaf covers.

Whether the forum does justice to the "Stratovarius legacy" is really the band's concern and not ours. That being said, I wouldn't mind whatsoever if there was a crackdown as long as the rules were very explicit and enforced consistently. And preferably not anonymously.

I don't think peace is the issue here. It's looks quite peacuful actually. And I don't see much personal insults or arguing. It's just, there are way too many plain weirdos. All these random absurd images and unrelated text that makes no sense whatsoever.

I'm against censorship too but wtf are these bot-like posts and users? They make absolutely no sense and derail almost every attempt to serious discussion.

Maybe a good clean-up of all users that havent posted for a year or so for start? Maybe fewer but actually active users.

Btw, TT should have no business or say in what is going on here. I'm not happy like I said with the trolling (mainly the absurdity that is going on) but this is not his forum. He can have his opinion, fine but that should be all.

Trying to shut the band down? Yeah, give it a fucking try!

But getting back to the forum issue, seriously where are all these trolls come from?! Are they bots?

im pro/banning only when people cross the line, and that line is this massive rejection by all the strato/forumites to one member because of his/her behaviour, in other words, vote for banning.
when there is a user that insults with no reason about your, religion, politicians, what country are you from, sexuality, racial comments repeateldy....
I think even in chaos-burg we cant just roll with it

I should do something, but starting to ban people or appointing some Hitler to clean the whole place up is probably not what it will be.

The easiest-to-implement idea I have at the moment is this "heavily moderated subforum". I mean, we have a bunch of garbage oriented subsections already so we're already halfway down that Stalinist slippery slope

Or should that be -- we have an escape pod in case of a Stalinist slippery slope

MEEEE!!!!! I WANT!!!!! and this guys will knows the Word "dicipline" amd make one fórum free in art and that whatever can show his tribute to stratovarius with liberty like Sarah and me AND ALL THE OTHERS THAT WANT DO IT AND FOR THIS INSANE GUYS THEY ARE SCARE , and if i see one insult againt his/her art, i advice 3 times and after i banned....

PLEASE!!!!!

JensJohansson wrote:

adrian9 wrote:

im pro/banning only when people cross the line, and that line is this massive rejection by all the strato/forumites to one member because of his/her behaviour, in other words, vote for banning.
when there is a user that insults with no reason about your, religion, politicians, what country are you from, sexuality, racial comments repeateldy....
I think even in chaos-burg we cant just roll with it

I should do something, but starting to ban people or appointing some Hitler to clean the whole place up is probably not what it will be.

The easiest-to-implement idea I have at the moment is this "heavily moderated subforum". I mean, we have a bunch of garbage oriented subsections already so we're already halfway down that Stalinist slippery slope

Or should that be -- we have an escape pod in case of a Stalinist slippery slope

I just realized part of what my entire problem is: I think that writing about music often turns out to be anything but a deep, valid, useful or beautiful thing for humans to be doing. In the end it should really all boil down to: I like this and you like that. But it so often goes into: I think this way and if you don't agree with me then i get upset at you.

To me that thread calls for a retarded cat picture or a PENIS in rainbow colored letters... or something. To in some sort of dadaist way signify the absurdity of trying to "dance about architecture". The problem is that on the SA forum if i registered and posted a rainbow PENIS, it would be moderated away.

MEEEE!!!!! I WANT!!!!! and this guys will knows the Word "dicipline" amd make one fórum free in art and that whatever can show his tribute to stratovarius with liberty like Sarah and me AND ALL THE OTHERS THAT WANT DO IT AND FOR THIS INSANE GUYS THEY ARE SCARE , and if i see one insult againt his/her art, i advice 3 times and after i banned....
PLEASE!!!!!

OK.. so we have a volunteer!

Is a "Mr Cool Edit" moderation OK with everyone? (Or maybe someone makes a poll suggesting who should be the designated Nazi mod)

Perhaps someone who has a SA forum account can pass this picture on, as a token of the futility of trying to explain or argue about music, with regards from Jens in Stratovarius... let's see what happens

I will forgot my block list insult if i start, im a correct man, but all hare free to show his/her love for stratovarius, i dont care if sing bad or play bad.....

LIBERTY!!! AND INSULT = BANNED

JensJohansson wrote:

JensJohansson wrote:

To me that thread calls for a retarded cat picture

This is the one I would suggest:

Perhaps someone who has a SA forum account can pass this picture on, as a token of the futility of trying to explain or argue about music, with regards from Jens in Stratovarius... let's see what happens

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